Showing posts with label Dirlewanger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dirlewanger. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 January 2020
Tuesday, 5 June 2018
Wednesday, 16 May 2018
Sunday, 11 March 2018
Dirlewanger’s ‘bloody adventures’ in Belarus in 1944
Oskar Dirlewanger, commander of the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, is responsible for being the head of one of the cruelest SS divisions during WWII which was composed of former prisoners, renegades and poachers. It wreak havoc anywhere it appeared and was acclaimed as the most heinous unit within German troops.
It is estimated that its "soldiers" killed more than 60,000 persons. Its crowning achievement was the Wola Massacre during Warsaw Rising in August 1944 when Dirlewanger’s troops executed more than 30,000 civilians (in total 50,000 were executed during the Wola Massacre in between 5-7 August 1944).
Belarus operations were a sad prelude to what happened in Warsaw in summer 1944. 345,000 people are said to be eliminated by Dirlewanger’s actions within the scope of operations named: „Adler”, „Erntefest”, „Zauberflöte”, „Cottbus”.
At the Palik lake, 16,662 Dirlewanger’s soldiers were sent to encircle scared villagers of nearby village to the lake side. 15,000 civilians are reported to have been killed. Dirlewanger’s idea to push people towards mine field proved to be very ‘effective’ and his commanders were delighted that he came up with such great „innovations”.
Dirlewanger is said to be involved in human trafficking and he was specialised in raping women and abusing children. One of the radio messages sent by Dirlewanger said: „Sturmbahnfuerher wants Russian girls. Otto will have a chase on Monday and will bring them down (…). The price the same as Obersturmbannfuerher set up earlier in the forests around the Palik Lake. One Russian girl for two vodka bottles”.(1)
Read more:
- · Ingrao, Chrisian. The SS Dirlewanger Brigade. The History of the Black Hunters, Skyhorse, New York 2011
- Richie, Alexandra, Warsaw 1944, published in 2015
- · https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/history-of-war/oskar-dirlewanger-the-ss-butcher-of-warsaw/ accessed on 11 March 2018
Saturday, 10 March 2018
Wola District Massacre during Warsaw Rising 1944
Between 5 and 7
August 1944, within THREE DAYS,
German units executed 50,000 civilians of the Wola district during Warsaw
Rising which erupted in Warsaw, capital of Poland, occupied by Germans since October
1939.
Key names to remember as for mass slaughtering, mass rapes,
mass looting as well as mass executions are: Oskar Dirlewanger, Heinrich Heinz Reinefarth, Alfred Spilker and Bronisław Kamiński.
When the Warsaw Rising started, Himmler on behalf of Adolf
Hitler ordered that:
- Captured insurgents are to be executed no matter whether they follow the stipulations of the Hague Conventions or not.
- Civilians, who are not taking part in the battle, women, children, are to be executed anyway.
- The whole city of Warsaw is to be levelled to the ground, i.e. houses, streets, offices – anything which constitutes the city.
German troops (mainly composed of SS, renegades, criminals
and former Soviet citizens) were asked to make a passage from the western part
of the city towards the Vistula River in order to allow German transports reach the Eastern Front. When the Rising burst out, Hitler got furious as Warsaw was a
very important transportation hub and not a single transport could have reached
the other side of the Vistula River.
The number of executed was so huge that the piles of corpses
reached the 2nd floor and it turned out that German units do not have enough
ammunition to kill all the detainees…
Heinz Reinefarth reported to General von Vormann: „I have too
many prisoners of war and not enough amunition”. His commanders had no doubts
as for the dilemma. Why? Let us think just of one of the ‘events’ from those
horrifying days.
One of the most notorious examples is when one of the
Dirlewanger units entered an orphanage where about 300 orphans were placed. One
of the soldiers, Matthias Schenk said that he heard Dirlewanger shout: „Don’t waste ammunition, kill all of them with
the butts!”. Schenk still can’t erase from his memory the sight of high steps
with blood flushing down (…)”.
Another terrifying story is what happened to Wanda Lurie. She was a mother of 3, the
oldest was 11 years old. She was expelled from her home with kids who got
executed in front of her eyes. The bullet that was destined to kill her, went
through her neck and she was neither killed nor she lost consciousness. She
fell on the heap of corpses and she remained in such a position for 2 days. On
the third day she decided to organise an escape. Why? She felt movements of her
baby as she was 9 months pregnant. She managed to escape and gave birth to her
baby son on 20 August. The only child who survived the war. Mr Mścisław Lurie
resides now in Warsaw and tries to do his best to keep in memory all what
happened to his family and his beloved city shattered with all those turmoils
of war.
Image: Wanda Lurie with her son
In total 50,000 persons are reported to have been killed
within 3 days. The slaughtering continued till 11 August 1944.
At some point Erich von dem Bach, SS Obergruppenfuerher, the
Commander of all German troops during Warsaw Rising, realised it is more
effective to send the detained to labour camps rather than execute them on the
spot not having any profits of them at all.
Warsaw Rising Museum identified
57,189 names of the Varsovians and Poles who lost their lives just because
they found themselves in Warsaw in summer 1944. (1)
Heinz Reinefarth was a respected citizen in post–war Germany
holding a position of a mayor of a
seaside resort of Westerland in Schleswig-Holstein. He was a lawyer and it was ‘impossible’
to bring him to justice due to the lack of evidence (sic!).
Image: H. Reinefarth
Oskar Dirlewanger was hanged in French controlled area of
Germany in 1945 because most supposedly someone recognised him and decided to finally
put his existence to an end.
Image: O. Dirlewanger
Read more:
- · Richie, A., Warsaw 1944, published in 2013
- · Davies, N., Rising ’44. The Battle for Warsaw. 2004
- · https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/history-of-war/oskar-dirlewanger-the-ss-butcher-of-warsaw/ accessed on 10 March 2018
- · https://ahtribune.com/history/1124-wola-massacre.html accessed on 10 March 2018
- Gurstyn, P. Rzeź Woli, 2014
Source: Youtube.com,
a clip from "Miasto 44" motion picture (Eng. "City 44").
Source: Youtube.com,
Mathias Schenk story.
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